I picked up this novella after reading how John Cheever read this over and over again in his life. The story is an incredible demonstration of realism. The emotions conveyed here with such relatively innocuous details of ordinary life were masterful. More than once I found myself thinking "how did he do that?". I will definitely be returning to this story again. It will be interesting to see what I find on a second, cooler reading, if such a reading is even possible.